Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS calls up VoIP

More reliable and cheap platform

The NHS Trust, which specialises in treating patients with mental health and learning disabilities, said it needed a more “resilient” platform that also cost less to run.

The VoIP platform has been deployed across 14 sites in the trust. It includes a range of applications aimed at reducing operational costs, and improving productivity and collaboration.

Previously, the trust ran different telephony systems at each site, a setup that had become costly and complex. The new system was simpler, and reduced the costs of calls, it said.

The contract, for an undisclosed value, also means Proximity will maintain the network. The VoIP platform has been designed in such a way as to ease a transition to a “fully converged” IP network, which is planned in the longer term.

Martin Harrison, telecoms project manager at the trust, said that having a resilient telephony platform was crucial to all medical situations, especially emergencies.

“Staff can quickly identify who’s working where, maintenance is handled at a central location, and, with applications such as auto-attendant, call handling is automated, helping to reduce costs and improve service delivery,” he said.